“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams

The news is full of reports regarding credit card companies and the suggestion that if they are regulated, only a select few of the population will be able to qualify for a credit card. How dumb is that, I ask myself. Quite so, I answer earnestly.

Banks and other big corporations are being bailed out with taxpayer money. Who is bailing out the little fellow, who may only be in a financial crisis because of having lost his or her job due to the economic crisis that he or she didn’t have a thing to do with creating in the first place? The term “unbalanced” comes to mind.

The people who were suppose to be the experts, or had supposed experts to rely upon, are the ones that made the major bad decisions that may have almost brought down this country through an economic crash. Yet, it is they who are being bought out or bailed out, while the little fellow, who gets perhaps more than his fair share of the blame, is left to figure out on his or her own how to survive the crisis or not. Definitely a scale slanted in favor of those who can’t justify being favored.

Credit card companies are having problems collecting from cardholders? Any possibility that they caused some of the problems they ended up being faced with? Any possibility that abruptly raising the interest rate, or claiming the payment was a day late and therefore due a late fee and maybe even an over-the-limit-fee that the late fee caused, might have something to do with bad accounts multiplying? Could it be that they charged people right out of being able to catch up and get out of the vicious circle the excessive charges created, and that maybe that was the beginning of a downslide for business and customer alike?

One would think the economic crisis would have opened eyes wide, but who would know, since the blinders appear to be stubbornly fixed on oh so many.

Credit card companies threaten to only provide credit to a select few if regulations are put on them regarding interest rates and fees. Okay, and the companies don’t see that they are restricting themselves far more than they are restricting the consumer they think they can hold hostage in an effort to have it all their way — bail out at the taxpayers expense and collecting high interest rates and fees from the consumer — especially the consumer that can least afford the excess charges?

What possible advantage do these companies think they have in charging fees that will then put account holders in default and in a position of being less likely or even unable to catch up? What possible advantage do they think they have in then placing these consumer accounts with collection agencies that are then going to take a big chunk out of any amount collected, but are more apt to give the consumer no reason (or ability) left to try?

There are banks and credit card companies that are possibly going to be bailed out. Have they offered like bail outs to their customers, or, instead, greedily hogged the financial second chance, as though all was done unto them, rather than them having done unto themselves and others? After all, so-called experts, or financial professionals, created the opportunities that set people up to fail in their credit card, mortgage and other credit obligations. If the professionals didn’t know better — how would the average person?

The average person doesn’t seem to be getting a bail out opportunity, even though he or she may not have had a thing to do with the crisis that has brought us so close to economic destruction. Instead, it seems the average person goes on paying the price for the lack of common sense utilized by so many in control. Maybe it is time that stops. Maybe it is time for common sense to be revisited and the consumer once again treated like the valuable commodity they are. After all, without a consumer — the product has no value.

Common Sense 101.

Carrie Hutchens is a former law enforcement officer and a freelance writer who is active in fighting against the death culture movement and the injustices within the judicial and law enforcement systems.